At least one fan was enjoying a home loss at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

During the eighth inning of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 6-1 loss to the New York Mets, a fan delivered a classic “idiot on the field” performance until it all went wrong, as these things often do. The fan, who appeared to be shirtless, displayed some impressive speed on the tape, outrunning multiple security guards along the warning track.

Unfortunately, the fan’s pants couldn’t keep up with him, and the resulting slowdown gave a guard the opportunity to catch up and shove him, sending him to the ground. Soon, it was a five-man dogpile.

The fan was eventually hauled off the field through the center field gate, with a jail cell likely awaiting him.

The situation played out to the amusement of the Mets dugout, with first baseman Pete Alonso among those laughing as the fan evaded the guards. The SNY broadcast booth had its own take, wondering what on Earth goes through a person’s mind as this happens.

“You know, the first few moments must be exhilarating, but there’s no endgame! It’s going to be painful and expensive in the end,” play-by-play man Gary Cohen said.

The fan ran onto the field not long after Alonso clubbed a three-run homer to put the Mets up by six, his second long ball of the game. It was a long night for the Dodgers offense as well, with an 0-for-4 performance with runners in scoring position and only one extra-base hit until the bottom of the ninth inning, when Andy Pages got them on the board with a solo homer.

Mets starting pitcher Griffin Canning, an Orange County native and former UCLA pitcher, threw six scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, continuing a stellar run by the Mets rotation in the first couple months of the season.

The Mets improved their record to 39-23, keeping them 1.5 games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East. The Dodgers remain a game ahead of the San Diego Padres in the NL West at 37-25.

LOS ANGELES — The New York Mets came into this season as a postseason contender and a real threat in the NL East, a division they haven’t won since they went to the World Series in 2015. And while the addition of $765 million man Juan Soto to a club that finished its season in the NLCS is a big reason behind New York’s high expectations, what this team may end up being remembered for beyond the bats of Soto, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso, is the dominance of its pitching. 

New York’s pitching has been its biggest strength throughout the first half of the season and even without having left-hander Sean Manaea, who was the team’s best starter in 2024, they’ve not only been able to manage, they’ve thrived.

The Mets currently lead all of MLB in team ERA this season and all five of the team’s starters currently have a sub-4.00 ERA, with each having at least 11 starts.

But how has New York turned itself into a factory for pitching?

Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner is considered one of the best in baseball and is a big part of the success of the staff. But if you ask any pitcher on the roster, they’d tell you it’s not a one-man show. The Mets’ pitching infrastructure, which includes the big-league coaching staff, player development and analytics department, have helped create an environment for the best pitching staff in baseball.

Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns has modeled his teams to be forward thinking when it comes to pitching. From the time he began running baseball operations in the fall of 2015 until his departure in 2022, the Brewers were always considered on of baseball’s best organizations for pitching development — a model that has followed him to New York.

What’s impressive about the Mets’ success this season it’s not just been guys who have had time in the organization to absorb years of information, like David Petersen, Tylor Megill or even veteran Kodai Senga. It’s also been arms who have recently come from other organizations, like Griffin Canning or Clay Holmes — which speaks to their talent, but also the consistent messaging players have been able to absorb.

“It’s a group effort,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “You got to give credit to the front office that is continuing to acquire these guys and identifying potential players that you could tinker with. And then the whole pitching group, from Hef to [assistant pitching coach Desi Druschel], Eric Jagers in player development, they work on being on the same page, identifying not only on how we can help guys, but just how we present the information to the players. Meeting players where they’re at.”

The Mets aren’t the first team in baseball to make adjustments to improve pitching. But what they have done is built a strong résumé of success stories. Manaea went from bouncing around with the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants on one-year deals with ERAs near 5, to an ERA in the mid-3s in New York. He signed a three-year, $75 million contract to stay in Queens.

By the same token, right-hander Luis Severino was coming off the worst season of his career in 2023 with the Yankees before joining the Mets. And after a year in the Mets’ pitching lab, the Venezuela native not only stayed healthy for the first time since 2018, but maintained an ERA in the 3s and parlayed that into a three-year, $67 million deal with the Athletics, the largest contract in team history.

“During the [2023] offseason, I was just thinking, what could I do to be better?” Severino said. “2018 was the last time I threw more than 100 innings. So I was just looking for a pitch to keep me in the games. So I think [us] adding that sinker, sweeper and cutter action, I was able to throw more innings. I wasn’t focused on striking everybody out.”

Canning (6-2) is the team’s latest reclamation project where it’s struck gold. The Mets’ right-hander allowed an American-League leading 99 earned runs last year with the Angels before coming to New York. This season, Canning has a career-best 2.90 ERA in 12 starts after he fired six scoreless innings against the Dodgers on Wednesday. He’s also increased his strikeout rate and ground-ball percentage. In the 6-1 victory Wednesday that was powered offensively by Alonso’s two homers and five RBI, Canning struck out seven. The victory gave New York a season series victory against the reigning World Series champs, 4-2, with one game left to play Thursday afternoon. 

“The staff has obviously done research on you before you get here, so they already have some things in mind that they want to try and work on,” Canning said. “I think the big thing is that they have a plan and they’re really good about how they communicate with guys. It’s unique to each guy and they know how to work to guys’ strengths.”

It’s not just success in their rotation, but also in their bullpen.

Reliever Ryne Stanek is no stranger to organizations that rely heavily on data, pitching two-plus seasons for the Tampa Bay Rays and three seasons for the Houston Astros. And when the reliever was traded to the Mets last season, it started an intricate process to get him back to being the best version of himself.

“They’re just like, ‘Hey, man, this is what we want. This is what we think you can do. How can we help you get there? They’re just really open and are willing to put in the work and the time to figure it out,” Stanek recalled. “Communicating with all the different groups that we have, like the analytics group talks to the pitching groups, and pitching groups talk to the analytics, and they both talk to the athletic training to keep workloads manageable and keep performance at a level that’s sustainable and gets the most out of you performance-wise.”

After a slow start with New York last season, Stanek has a 3.10 ERA in 24 appearances this season and is back to being one of the most reliable relievers in baseball. Stanek has seen firsthand what the Mets have been able to do and credits it not only to the team, but players who want to be better.

“A lot of it is buy-in,” Stanek said. “When I was in Tampa, you’d have older guys come in, because Tampa has done really well at making guys better, I’m not gonna say resurrected guys, but like, making tweaks to get them back to where they had been in the past, or maybe a little bit better in some areas. And like Houston, kind of same boat. Whenever I came in last year and [Severino] and Sean [Manaea], it showed that they got better here. They made things a little bit more efficient, and just tweaked some things. And it’s like, ‘I believe that this is gonna work.’ It says, ‘I can see so much of it is, like, the ideas.’

“Think of it like Organization A vs. Organization B. Like, A has the right ideas, but they haven’t implemented them enough to show that they’re successful. Organization B, they’ve had a few guys that have come in and clearly have gotten better. They may be saying the same thing, but one can say, ‘this is what we’ve done already. Trust us, we have a track record. You may take one step back, but you’re gonna take three steps forward’ versus ‘Hey, man, trust me, it’s gonna work.”

The Mets have figured out how to get the most out of pitchers both in their rotation and in their bullpen. That’s not to say it will always work, but being able to get the most out of their arms for an extended period is a luxury in this era in baseball. Pitching wins in October and the more quality pitching the Mets can attain, the more they increase their chances of success once they get there.

President Donald Trump issued a full-throated endorsement of Pete Rose’s reinstatement to MLB on Feb. 28. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was reported to be considering such a petition on March 1. Manfred granted that petition on May 14.

It should not be a surprise that each of those events are related.

Speaking with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich on Wednesday, Manfred acknowledged that Trump’s statement earlier this year played a role in his decision to reinstate Rose from the ineligible list, making MLB’s all-time hits leader eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Trump specifically said he was issuing a “pardon” for Rose, though that would have zero formal influence on the mechanisms which kept Rose out of Cooperstown for his entire post-retirement life. The statement, which urged baseball to “get off its fat, lazy ass,” did however carry some influence:

“The President was one of a number of voices that was supportive of the idea that this was the right decision,” Manfred said at MLB’s headquarters. “Obviously, I have respect for the office and the advice that he gave. I paid attention to [it]. But I had a lot of other people that were weighing in on the topic as well.”

Trump has been a longtime supporter of Rose, who was permanently placed on the ineligible list in 1989 as part of an agreement with MLB after an investigation unearthed ample evidence that he had gambled on the Cincinnati Reds while he was managing them. Rose agreed to the punishment without formally admitting guilt, but had his requests for reinstatement rejected or ignored by three different MLB commissioners, including Manfred, before his death in 2023.

Manfred’s decision to reinstate Rose, as well as every other dead player on the ineligible list, opens the door for Rose to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame as early as 2028. He will need 12 out of 16 votes from the Classic Baseball Era Committee to make that happen.

Trump helped get Rose off MLB’s ineligible list, but the Hall of Fame could be a different challenge

While Rose’s Hall of Fame enshrinement is seen by some as only a matter of time, the Hall of Fame itself has made it pretty clear in the past that it doesn’t want him. The actual rule forbidding ineligible players from Cooperstown consideration only exists because the Hall didn’t want him on the ballot in 1991, when he was riddled with scandal. The rule was passed unanimously.

That doesn’t mean the committee will be similarly unyielding, but character concerns have clearly been a consideration in the past, such as when Barry Bonds received fewer than four votes from a committee in 2022.

Rose’s candidacy clearly faces obstacles due to the conduct of the man himself, and not just because he bet on his own team as an MLB manager. He lied about that gambling for a decade and a half and continued lying for the rest of his life about gambling as a player, of which there is physical evidence.

There are even parallels with Bonds, as one of Rose’s bats from 1985, back when he was chasing Ty Cobb’s hits record, was found to contain telltale signs of corking in 2010. A Florida man claimed a decade later that he did it for Rose.

And then there’s the matter of what John Dowd, the former federal prosecutor who originally investigated Rose in 1989, alleged in 2015. In an interview, Dowd alleged that Rose committed statutory rape with 12-to-14-year-old girls provided by a memorabilia dealer at spring training in the 1970s, when he was a married father of two in his 30s. 

Rose sued Dowd for defamation, but later agreed to have the lawsuit dismissed with prejudice after Dowd’s legal team responded with a sworn statement from a woman who said she had a consensual relationship with Rose in Ohio when she was younger than 16 years old. Rose later admitted to having a relationship with the woman, but claimed he thought she was 16 at the time. 

Rose’s Hall of Fame candidacy could very well rest on whether or not the committee considers the allegations beyond what got him banned. While Rose claimed Dowd was defaming him in 2015, Trump didn’t seem to have an issue with the attorney’s integrity around that time. He hired Dowd as a personal attorney in 2017.

The New York Knicks parted ways with coach Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday, just days after the team was eliminated from what was its first Eastern Conference finals appearance in 25 years.

Almost immediately, star guard Josh Hart spoke out on social media about his now former head coach.

The split came just days after Knicks star Jalen Brunson defended Thibodeau after their loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 6, which ended their postseason run.

“Is that a real question right now?” Brunson responded when asked if Thibodeau was the guy to take the Knicks to the next level.

“You just asked me if I believe he’s the right guy? Yes.”

Hart and Brunson weren’t alone in their praise for Thibodeau, either. Actor and noted Knicks superfan Ben Stiller, who was frequently spotted sitting courtside throughout the team’s most recent playoff run, thanked Thibodeau for making the Knicks “relevant again” on social media, too.

Noted Knicks fan John McEnroe happened to be calling the Carlos Alcaraz-Tommy Paul match in the French Open when the news broke, and he reacted to the news live, saying “that’s pretty harsh. That is a bummer.”

Coincidentally, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose, who played for Thibodeau with the Chicago Bulls, Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks, was at Roland Garros watching the match. He had joined the TNT broadcast earlier.

Plenty in the Knicks world and New York media universe weren’t quite on board with the move to fire Thibodeau.

At least one person didn’t waste any time vying for the now open job in Manhattan, too.

The Knicks won 51 games this season and reached the conference finals for the first time since 2000. Thibodeau got the Knicks to the playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm, and he racked up back-to-back 50-win seasons for the first time since the early 1990s. Before Thibodeau was hired, the Knicks hadn’t made the playoffs in seven seasons.

By all accounts, Thibodeau’s time with the Knicks was a success. As has been the case at his previous stops in Chicago and Minnesota, it just wasn’t successful enough.

RENTON, Wash. (AP) — First and foremost, Sam Darnold wants it to be known that he’s not a good golfer.

The Seattle Seahawks quarterback, who signed a $100.5 million, three-year contract in March, said he’s a 10 handicap. The 27-year-old spends time on the course whenever he can during the offseason, and hopes to hike and keeping trying out restaurants in the Seattle area that he now calls home.

Oh, and about that home.

“We bought a place, so to be honest, been moving a ton of furniture in,” Darnold said Wednesday.

That’s been the focus of Darnold’s offseason outside of football. Five days into organized team activities, Darnold’s top priority has been learning first-year offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s playbook.

Kubiak and Darnold were both with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023, but much has changed since that season in the Bay Area, when Kubiak was a passing game coordinator and Darnold a backup.

Kubiak spent last season as the New Orleans Saints’ offensive coordinator. Darnold, meanwhile, enjoyed his finest NFL season, setting career highs in passing yards, touchdowns and completion percentage while guiding the Minnesota Vikings to a 14-3 record.

“You see the tape, the tape tells it all. He grew a lot,” Kubiak said. “He took an opportunity there and ran with it, and he’s been doing a great job for us here.”

Such praise only reinforces the obvious: Darnold is Seattle’s starter. Coach Mike Macdonald said as much during an interview with KIRO-AM on Tuesday, when he was asked whether anything other than an injury to Darnold would prevent him from starting the season opener on Sept. 7.

“Sam’s our starting quarterback,” Macdonald said. “We love him. He’s doing a tremendous job.”

Darnold said he’s a fan of the other quarterbacks in the meeting room, Jalen Milroe and Drew Lock. During the NFL draft in April, Macdonald called Darnold to let him know about the team’s plans to select Milroe out of Alabama in the third round.

It was a gesture of respect to the veteran QB, who signed just a month earlier.

“I think at the end of the day, communication is key,” Darnold said. “But for him to be able to call and communicate about that, it was cool.”

Darnold learned not to get rattled easily during stints in two big markets. He played in college at Southern California and then was drafted by the New York Jets, where he was considered a bust. He moved on to Carolina and San Francisco before resurrecting his career in Minnesota.

Now, he comes to Seattle as a leader and face of the franchise. Working in Kubiak’s system has eased his transition, but Kubiak was quick to point out — without giving away any secrets — that the Seahawks’ offense will be uniquely its own.

Darnold is seeking to absorb as much information as he can, and for now, he’s leaving the golf clubs stowed away.

“Learning a ton right now,” Darnold said. “Just building with the guys and just taking it one day at a time.”

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